Fifty Shades Of Grey: Call To Burn Hit Book

A women's charity director wants to make a bonfire out of a hit novel, claiming it is degrading and encourages sexual violence.

Clare Phillipson, director of the Wearside Women In Need, is urging people to bin Fifty Shades Of Grey and wants to burn copies of it on November 5.

"Our concern is not the graphic depiction of sex - this is an abusive relationship presented as a love story," she said. "It normalises abuse, degrades women and encourages sexual violence.

"There is lots of abuse in the book, not just sexual abuse. Do millions and millions of women suffer from secret self-loathing? Do they all want to be treated this badly?

"Some of what happens in the book, Fred West did to his victims in his cellar. I fail to see what is erotic about that."

Ms Phillipson believed if the author had been a man, the books would not have been published.

"There is emotional and sexual abuse of a 20-year-old with no sexual experience who is persuaded that being hit is good fun."

She said the way Grey hurts Ana then later makes up to her with expensive gifts and thoughtful e-mails was typical of a domestic abuser.

Speaking at one of the refuges the charity runs on Wearside, she said one victim of domestic violence who had read the book told her it left her confused.

"She told me: 'If this is a love story, how come it didn't feel like this when it was happening to me'," she said.

Ms Phillipson agreed that campaigning to burn the book was controversial. "There's an assumption that Nazis are the only people who burn books," she said. "What we are saying is, this book is rubbish and we would like to reduce it to ashes.

"We are not burning the Bible or a political philosophy, we are burning the depiction of an abusive man as a romantic hero."

Publisher Random House said: "The Fifty Shades trilogy is a work of romantic fiction which explores a consensual relationship between two willing adult participants.

"The books are being enjoyed by millions of readers – primarily women – around the world."